CIA Targets Fidel: The Secret Assassination Report [Paperback]

Fabián Escalante (Author)

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About the Author

Escalante is a former head of Cuban counterintelligence and a respected authority by US researchers on CIA activities against Cuba. Following Watergate and the 1975 US Senate Commission, the US government established a congressional committee to reexamine the Kennedy assassination. President Castro assigned Fabian Escalante to direct this Cuban investigation in 1978.

Product Details

• Paperback: 122 pages
• Publisher: Ocean Press (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1875284907
• ISBN-13: 978-1875284900
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,835,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of Idiocy, January 4, 2005

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Dana Garrett - See all my reviews
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This review is from: CIA Targets Fidel: The Secret Assassination Report (Paperback)

Poisoned diving suits, syringes made to look like pens, exploding seashells and cigars--these are but a few of the 612 known plots against Castro between the years of 1959-1993. Apologists for the CIA and the terrorists among the Cuban exile community cannot dismiss this book as Cuban disinformation because the records provided here are CIA declassified files. This book is the smoking gun.

To read this book is to learn how hatred makes people not only violent but ridiculous as well. Murdering Castro wasn't always the aim of each plot, although, no doubt, that was the would-be assassins ultimate aim. At times they sought to embarrass and discredit Castro in ways that ranged from the childish and prankish to the sinister.

There were plots to slip him LSD before one of his speeches so that he would laugh hysterically and discredit himself. One harebrained analyst believed the secret of Castro's charisma lay entirely in his beard. He proposed that thallium salts be placed in Castro's shoes so that his beard would fall out. Imagine the insult to the Cuban people suggested by this plot: the Cuban people loved Castro not for his ideas and ideals but because they were captivated by his facial hair. The contempt of the slur is only exceeded by the idiocy of the plot.

I used to believe that Castro and the revolution in Cuba survived forty-plus years of USA overt and covert onslaught because of the intelligence of Castro and the guardians of the revolution. Not any longer, although that was part of it. Another part--a huge part as this book demonstrates--is that the enemies of the revolution are imbeciles, made dumb by their hatred and unwillingness to accept that history in Cuba has moved past them.